MILWAUKEE >> The Dodgers paid Clayton Kershaw well to do exactly what he did on the mound Sunday. In eight innings against the Milwaukee Brewers, he allowed six hits, one run and struck out six batters as the Dodgers won 5-1.

They didn’t necessarily need Kershaw to do what he did in the fifth inning – diving head-first to snare a pop-up bunt 10 feet in front of home plate – or to reach base three times.

Or maybe they did.

On a day when Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig were both out of the lineup, the Dodgers received several unexpected contributions. Light-hitting shortstop Miguel Rojas went 3 for 5. Lighter-hitting catcher A.J. Ellis hit his first home run of the season.

Meanwhile, Adrian Gonzalez finished off a torrid series by going 2 for 3 with two doubles and two RBIs. He went 7 for 10 with five RBIs in three games against the Brewers.

Kershaw singled, walked, was hit by a pitch and scored the run that tied the game 1-1 in the second inning.

Kershaw, Ellis and Dodgers manager Don Mattingly described the win as a struggle for the pitcher on the mound.

“It was not easy,” Kershaw said. “Sometimes one pitch is working, sometimes one’s not. It’s not every day you’re going to have all your pitches.”

Ellis called it “a clinic on how to win when you don’t have close to your best stuff.”

Either Kershaw adapted to perfectly exploit his opponent’s weaknesses, or the Brewers failed to exploit Kershaw’s. Whichever the case, Kershaw’s submaximal stuff was virtually indistinguishable from some pitchers at their best.

The Dodgers (67-52) definitely needed the win, having lost the first two games of the series. Sunday’s game was tied until the fifth inning, when Matt Kemp drove in Gonzalez to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead.

In the bottom of the inning, Milwaukee’s Jean Segura batted against Kershaw with one out and Rickie Weeks on third base.

Segura bunted a pitch foul down the first-base line as Weeks tried to score on the safety squeeze. He tried bunting the next pitch too, popping it up between the pitcher’s mound and home plate as Weeks charged down the line again.

“You kind of know it’s coming,” Mattingly said. “We talked about it, that he would do it right there back-to-back.”

Kershaw certainly saw it coming. He popped off the mound, sprinted for the plate, and went airborne to snag the ball above the ground. Weeks had no chance to make it back to third base before Kershaw threw to Juan Uribe to complete the double play.

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“It’s fun to feel like a baseball player once in a while,” Kershaw said of the play.

The left-hander also picked off Carlos Gomez trying to steal second base in the third inning, and got lucky when Brewers pitcher Jimmy Nelson (2-3) unwisely ran into an out at third base with nobody out.

Maybe the most pivotal juncture in the game came in the fourth inning, when Ryan Braun attempted to advance from second to third base on a pitch in the dirt. Third-base umpire Marty Foster initially ruled that Braun beat Uribe’s tag, but Mattingly challenged and won when replays showed that Braun was out.

Instead of having a runner on third base with no outs, Milwaukee had nobody on with one out. Kershaw escaped the inning unscathed.

The Dodgers broke the game open late with a run in the seventh and two more in the eighth, including Ellis’ first home run of the season. Kenley Jansen pitched a scoreless ninth inning in a non-save situation.

With a national TV audience watching, Kershaw’s strong all-around game bolstered his credentials for the National League’s Most Valuable Player award. Personal honors are almost a taboo subject around the pitcher, and certainly not anything he would cite as a motivating factor.

But the big numbers are there: Kershaw (14-2) leads the major leagues with a 1.78 earned-run average. His 14th win of the season is tied for the major-league lead, despite the fact that he spent nearly six weeks on the disabled list earlier this season.

If fielding and hitting count toward the decision, it should be noted that Kershaw’s .186 batting average is only a shade lower than that of Ellis (.189). His diving catch of Segura’s bunt was nothing new to his manager.

“He’s hard all the time,” Mattingly said. “He runs hard to first. I think he trains in a way that he’s a baseball player. He’s trying to help himself win a game. He works on his bunting, his hitting.